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CIA Iran leak jury signals impasse

By JOSH GERSTEIN

01/26/2015 12:41 PM EST

UPDATE: A few hours after this item was posted, the jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts. More details here.The earlier post appears below.

A federal court jury mulling an array of leak-related charges against former CIA Officer Jeffrey Sterling signaled Monday that it is having difficulty agreeing on some of the nine felony counts in the case.

The jury began deliberating in Alexandria, Virginia, on Thursday after hearing testimony over seven days about claims Sterling leaked details of a top-secret CIA operation aimed at undermining Iran’s nuclear program by giving Tehran flawed atomic weapons designs. The project was detailed in a 2006 book by New York Times reporter James Risen, who did not testify at the trial.

Jurors asked technical questions about some of the charges last week, but a note to emerge just before noon Monday was the first explicit sign the 12-member panel might be stuck.

“We cannot reach agreement on several counts. We need additional instructions on how to proceed,” the jury said in a note U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema read in court. The note did not appear to disclose which counts were in dispute or whether the verdicts on the other counts were for acquittal, conviction or some combination of the two.

Due to that uncertainty, it’s not clear whether the jury’s predicament favored the defense or the prosecution. Any sign of difficulty convicting on some charges is a blow to the prosecution, which has spent more than a decade pursuing the case and contended Sterling was the only person who could logically have been Risen’s main source.

However, conviction on even a single count could send Sterling to prison for years.

With the jury being held outside the courtroom, Brinkema said she planned to give the jurors a mild admonition to keep trying, but she wasn’t inclined to force them to stay at it if they were deadlocked.

“It’s a very complicated case … a circumstantial evidence case. This jury’s been out since Thursday,” the judge said.

The defense and prosecution appeared to agree it was too soon to take a partial verdict, although two of the key prosecutors on the case only made it to the hastily called hearing after it was already underway.

Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick told Brinkema it was “probably premature” to see what verdicts jurors had settled on.

CORRECTION (Monday, 11:50 P.M.): The initial version of this post said the jury was considering ten counts. In fact, the judge dismissed one of those counts at the close of evidence in the case, leaving nine counts for the jury.